[IP] Largest prime number ever is found
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 01:41:07 -0800
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[Note: This item comes from reader Mike Cheponis. DLH]
At 12:12 -0800 12/2/03, Mike Cheponis wrote:
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 12:12:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Mike Cheponis <mac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Largest prime found
Largest prime number ever is found
15:11 02 December 03
NewScientist.com news service
A 26-year-old graduate student in the US has made mathematical history by
discovering the largest known prime number.
The new number is 6,320,430 digits long. It took just over two years to
find using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers.
Michael Shafer a chemical engineering student at Michigan State University
used his office computer to contribute spare processing power to the Great
Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). The project has more than 60,000
volunteers from all over the world taking part.
"I had just finished a meeting with my advisor when I saw the computer had
found the new prime," Shafer says. "After a short victory dance, I called
up my wife and friends involved with GIMPS to share the great news."
Prime numbers are positive integers that can only be divided by themselves
and one. Mersenne primes are an especially rare type of prime that take
the form 2 p-1, where p is also a prime number. The new number can be
represented as 220,996,011-1. It is only the 40th Mersenne prime to have
ever been found.
Building blocks
Mersenne primes were first discussed by Euclid in 350 BC and have been
central to the branch of mathematics known as number theory ever since.
They are named after a 17th century French monk who first came up with an
important conjecture about which values of p would yield a prime.
Primes are the building blocks of all positive numbers. They have
practical uses too, for example by providing a way of exchanging the
cryptographic keys that keep internet communications secure from
eavesdropping. However, despite their significance, mathematicians do not
understand the way prime numbers are distributed making it very difficult
to identify new primes.
Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician at Oxford University and author of The
Music of the Primes, says the discovery is unlikely to add much to our
understanding of the way primes are distributed but is still significant.
"It's a really good measure of what our computational capabilities are,"
he told New Scientist. "It's a really fun project. Everyone gets a
different bit of the number universe to look at. It's a bit like the lottery."
The GIMPS project uses a central computer server and free software to
coordinate the activity of all its contributors. Contributing machines are
each allocated different prime number candidates to test.
Some people contribute to GIMPS out of mathematical curiosity or to test
their computer hardware, while others just hope to go down in history as
the discoverer of a massive prime. There is also a financial incentive
with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit US group, offering a
$100,000 prize for the discovery of the first prime with 10 million digits.
Shafer's discovery was made on 17 November but it was not independently
verified until now. "It's humbling to see so many people of varied lands,
ages and vocations volunteering for this fun and amazing project," says
Scott Kurowski, whose company Entropia manages the GIMPS server.
"There are more primes out there," adds George Woltman, who started the
GIMPS project in 1996. "And anyone with an internet-connected computer can
participate."
Will Knight http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994438
Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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